The importance of failure and blame. *vid* (Destiny)

by slycrel , Sunday, November 08, 2015, 19:59 (3398 days ago) @ Korny

Thanks for that video, very insightful. I enjoy post-mortems like that very much.

When given a tough roadblock like defending the SABRE Warsat, players are happy going under the map to save time.

When given a tough mission, like the Black Spindle challenge, players will bash their heads against the wall for hours.

Is the reward the difference, or is it the challenge itself? I know many folks who have the Spindle already, but are willing to help others tackle the challenge for hours, so it can't just be the carrot.

Your examples of the SABRE mission warsat and black spindle are good ones. For me I think it's pretty easy to say why people will help their friends on the spindle mission. number one, it's part of the coop social experience. It's more fun to play with friends and help them get to where you've been. secondarily, there's the ship drop that keeps some players playing it over and over. And lastly, it's new content. It's you getting to show your friends something you found worthwhile.

The warsat is a challenge that takes a while and feels a bit RNG-ish. It doesn't promote team play much, mostly just every man for himself, res when you can. Then on to the more meaningful stuff. (one of these days I'm going to start the warsat then go try and get into his bunker the other way, just to see if it's a possible alternate route)

Trials... well, trials is Bungie's hardcore PvP mode. I don't begrudge them this. I think it fills a fantastic niche and I think it's fine for a tournament style event. When it is the only event, other than the hard-mode raid, which can drop 310-320 items, I get a little grumbly. It's more than just a tournament. It's one of two things in the game that gives out high level items. It's trying to fill a couple different purposes, but because of that it creates divides between the playerbase, and the social side of "fun" suffers.

Yeah, we're in an awkward phase where endgame content narrowed significantly, but let's give it some time... Bungie's still learning.

Also, I'm sad that there are not Trials equivalents in other games. BO3 has an Arena, but that's too large scale for me. Something small, tight, and rewarding like Trials is pretty unique right now...

I agree, Bungie has room to improve but they are also paying attention. I'm not too worried on the lack of content, just a little surprised. It seems like, once the campaign and initial quests are done, you kind of hit a grindy wall. That's MMOs for you. I hope that changes sooner, rather than later. That may be the ultimate goal of the micro-transactions team, to keep the in-between times filled with interesting content.

I think that there are trials equivalents in other games, in differing forms. Starcraft has a ladder system that is similar. I fondly remember playing elimination on the teleport map at lan parties with halo 1. And the elimination gametype reminds me of my counter-strike days. All these things rhyme to me, and I'm glad bungie is putting thought and effort into crafting such things. It seems as though they really are trying to make it so you can have as much content in PvP as PvE so players have a choice.